


Hope Comes In Many Forms

by ClydeW



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, NON GENDERED READER, Self-Harm, based solely in the derelict, non specified, reader can be any class/race/gender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:20:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClydeW/pseuds/ClydeW
Summary: The past is being repeated, and the drifter isn't particularly happy about it. But nevertheless he's right there to help you through it, no matter what it takes.
Relationships: The Drifter (Destiny)/Reader, The Drifter/Guardian (Destiny)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 55





	Hope Comes In Many Forms

**Author's Note:**

> ->>SELF HARM WARNING<<-  
> *graphic descriptions are used in this fic from personal experience and could possibly be triggering to people. Please read at your own risk if this is a trigger for you*
> 
> when you run out of comforting drifter fics to read, you begin to write your own

You sit on the floor of the derelict, a hallway secluded from the main platform. The entire ship was eerily silent, no gambit matches were scheduled for anytime soon and the silence was comforting to you in a strange way. You hadn’t been there for long, maybe ten minutes max, before the owner had found you. The drifter appeared on his platform, taken shadows surrounding him as he transmitted in from the tower. You watched as he blinked a couple of times and then looked around, without moving from the spot he arrived in. 

“Alright hotshot, where are you hiding?” he calls out, like its a game of hide and seek. Although there is a slight note of annoyance in his tone, which makes your stomach churn. Your thoughts start spinning in your head like a merry-go-round, meaning that you don’t notice drifter walk over and kneel down in front of you. He takes in your appearance for a moment and then snaps his fingers in front of your face when he realizes that you're lost in your own head. You blink rapidly, trying to focus in on the reality around you. Your eyes bounce around for a while before focusing in on the drifter. He smiles softly, but the smile fades when your expression remains blank. 

“...you okay there, sunshine?” he asks, scanning your body again to make sure he didn't miss anything the first time around. He looks back up to meet your eyes again, but the beautiful orbs aren't there to meet his. Your head is lowered, staring at your own fingers, a mixture of embarrassment and fear swirling inside of you. In truth, you weren’t okay, but explaining why was the last thing you felt like doing right now. You instead just shrugged your shoulders, hoping he would take that as a valid response. 

To your dismay, the drifter wasn’t convinced in the first place, and your shrugging only confirmed what he believed to be true. 

-A year and some odd days ago; the end of a gambit match directly to the derelict-

You transmitted into the derelict’s main stage, landing on your knees and hands. Blood sputtered from the back of your throat and onto the metal floor, causing you to cough and choke. The drifter rushed forward from the derelict’s back room, carrying a slightly rusted ammo box. He slid on his knees to get closer to you, opening the ammo box almost simultaneously. Your arms soon began to shake, having difficulty holding up your weakened self plus all the weight of your weapons and armor. Thankfully the drifter saw this, and helped you lay down, gently guiding you to the cold metal beneath you. The sudden coldness helped sooth the aches in and on your back, and helped the oncoming concussion pain from having your head slammed into a tree from the primeval. Soon you were loosing consciousness, and the last thing you heard was drifter furiously calling out to your ghost, arguing with him to help more. 

You woke up to a pounding that felt and sounded like a pissed off ogre was right outside the door, but opening your eyes revealed that you were still on the derelict, meaning that there was no ogre. You were, however, not where you remember arriving. Instead of the middle of the derelict’s stage, you found yourself in what you could only presume was drifter’s bed. You sat up, causing a splitting pain to cut through your spine and ribcage. You whimpered softly out of pain, not having any strength to fully scream, no matter how terrible the pain felt. You swallowed in a deep breath as best as you could, although you now figured out that breathing was going to be difficult with how bad your chest hurt. Looking down you found yourself in not the same attire you arrived in either, instead you now wore a jade green sweatshirt and black sweatpants, both which looked two sizes too big for you. You reached down to touch where the pain was still throbbing from, only to pull your hand back when you felt something that was not skin. The shirt hid a thick cotton wrapping of bandages around your chest and midsection, and although you couldn’t see it, the bandages hid three deep slash marks across your front and a bruise the color of a vandal’s cape adorning the length of your spine. 

You inhaled as much air as you could without causing any pain and pushed yourself off of the bed, almost falling back on to it in the process. You found your footing though, and stabilized yourself by holding onto the nearby nightstand. When you tried to walk forward, however, you were only able to manage a few steps before your legs turned to liquified Light and your face met the floor. You would’ve said a few not child friendly terms from the amount of pain the misstep had caused had the fall not knocked your breath right out of you. You pushed yourself up with your hands, sitting up off the floor. Drifter frantically appeared in the doorway seconds later, hearing your fall. His eyes searched for you on the bed, but soon found you where you were currently on the floor. The worried look faded from his face when he saw that you weren’t in any immediate danger. He walked over to you and knelt down, smirked a little.

“Now i know this isn't where i left you.” he said, the smirk practically running off of his face and flowing down each word he spoke. Before you could say anything he scoops you into his arms, making it look as easy as picking up an engram, as if you weren’t a war hero, and places you back onto the bed; being gentle to not touch your torso too much in the process. You stayed silent as he scanned you over, making sure you hadn’t made anymore damage from your trip to the floor. Once he was satisfied and was sure you were safe, he sighed and sat down next to you. 

“You mind telling me what happened, hotshot?” he asks you, his face going completely serious. Your eyebrows clash together, slightly confused by his question. 

“You were there, watching the match, you saw what happened.” you told him, completely confused by his question. He had been there, well, maybe not physically, but he still saw what had happened; the way the primeval threw you around like you were its play thing, somehow not wounding you enough to kill you and also damaging your ghost bad enough that he was incapable of healing you. Drifter looks into your eyes, the blue in his own flickering against the dim light.

“Thats not what im talkin about.” he says, staring at you. When he sees the confusion spread along your face even further he looks down at your arms, folded into your lap. You follow his gaze. The back of your mind knows exactly what he’s about to mention next, but you're too caught up in the moment, and pain, to really comprehend whats going on. His fingers feel like feathers against your skin as he lifts your arm, using his other hand to push the sleeve of the sweatshirt up to your elbow, exposing a mess of red, purple, and brown slash marks splattered against the skin of your forearm like a child’s art project. The air around you two fell completely still, as if neither one of you were breathing. Drifter still stared at you, refusing to look at what he had exposed. You, on the other hand, weren’t sure where to look. Your eyes flickered from the drifter, to your arm, to your other hand still in your lap, to the floor; the mixture of emotions flowing through your mind collided with each other, making it hard to decide what to do. Drifter decided to break the silence however, his patience wearing thin. 

“You going to answer me?” he asks. He’s still staring at you and he hasn’t moved at all, his fingers still holding onto your arm, still as light as a feather’s touch. You decide to look at him, albeit maybe just for a few seconds, but those few seconds are enough to make you want to burst into tears. He’s hurt, you can see it in his eyes, but he’s also upset. You look away as fast as you can, your vision becoming blurry and water logged. You sigh, trying to hold whatever pieces of yourself remain together. You look at the floor and try to give him an answer, although you already both know he knows the truth.

“The…..that’s not from today’s fight.” you managed to choke out, your words breaking like porcelain over rocks. He’s still staring at you, but you refuse to look at him. 

“Then who did this? Where did these scars come from?” he asks, even though deep down he already knows the answer. He glances at the mess of marks on your skin, wanting to make them just disappear, but soon he’s back to staring at you. A small sob escapes you and you finally break, shattering into a million pieces. 

“I did, okay? I did! Things get rough out there and i have to release stress somehow. I tell ghost not to heal them because i like them. I like the fact that a part of me is actually normal and that i bleed just like everyone else. No one was supposed to find out, especially not you.” you spurt out your words like a rambling child, yanking your arm from his grip and pulling them into your chest as you spoke, pulling the sleeve back down in the process. Tears now freely flow from your eyes and you try to muffle your cries with the overly long sleeves of the sweatshirt, keeping your inflicted arm as close to you as possible. Drifter listens to you speak, and then sighs, letting you calm down a bit before he does anything. You’re too lost in your own head to notice but he has pulled you into his arms, your face buried in his chest as he wraps you into an affirming hug, using his actions instead of his words to tell you everything he knows you want to hear. Once your sobs quiet down into small sniffles he starts to run his gloved fingers through your hair slowly. 

-Back to the present-

There was a small patch of silence as he stared at your sorrowful figure. You however still kept your gaze on your clutched fingers. He sighed at one point, although you truthfully weren’t paying attention, and he sat down in front of you. 

“Lemme see.” he asked firmly. He had already deduced what the situation was, although there was a sliver of hope left inside of you that hoped he was still clueless. 

“See what?” you replied, your voice coming out more roughly than you desired. You winced at the sound, still refusing to look anywhere but downwards. 

“You can deny it all you want, but we both know whats happenin here.” he said. He sounded concerned, and even maybe a bit upset, but he remained calm and spoke in a soft voice. “You did it again, didnt you?” he leaned forward. 

You sniffled as hot tears began to pour down your cheeks uncontrollably. His suspicion was confirmed when you began to nod slowly, your whole form now shaking. 

“You don't want to show me, do you?” 

You shook your head as best as you could, considering your whole body was already shaking violently. 

“Will you let Ghost heal them this time?”

Again, you shook your head. Your ghost materialized in quietly, hovering next to your head. Drifter glanced at him. 

“Please pumpkin?” drifter pleaded. He rarely ever did so, but you were forever the exception to any personality rule he had set forth for himself, including this one. You finally looked up at him, and he nearly broke down crying himself. If anything could break the drifter, it was the sight of you being hurt, wether that be mentally, physically, or self inflicted. You stared at each other for a while, waiting for one to break and give in, and fortunately it was you. 

You nodded slowly, turning to look at your ghost, who was also quite worried, as you pulled up the sleeve of your shirt, exposing the same forearm from the year before. Except this time there were less. There were still spots of brown, old scars that hadn't had the chance to fully heal just yet, but most of the marks from before were completely faded, not even noticeable unless you knew about them. There was, however, a small section that was once again a bright shade of red. Fresh marks that were bruised, the deeper cuts being a darker red than the rest, pink incompassing the surface around all of them. Drifter had to take a deep breath in steel himself when he saw. You glanced over at him at the same time he decided to look away form the scene. You looked up at your ghost, giving him a nod to start the process. Soon the bright reds, purples, and pinks were completely gone, not a single trace of them having ever been cut remained. Drifter looked back when the sounds from the light being used had stopped, sighing from relief. 

Your ghost decided to leave when he was done, letting you two have the moment for yourselves. You were scared to look at drifter and you remained still, not sure what move to make next. Thankfully though you didn't have to decide on what to do as drifter closed the space between you two, pulling you into a tight and comforting hug, pulling the sleeve down in the process. 

“Im not gonna ask why, or when, or anything like that. But just remember that i’m always here. Anytime, anywhere. You just call and im there. You can get through this. No matter how much time it takes. N’ i’ll be right there with ya every step of the way.” drifter told you, kissing the top of your head softly when he finished. You nuzzled your head into his chest as a thank you, and he again began to run his fingers through your hair slowly.

**Author's Note:**

> finally a story thats over 1000 words!! *party horn noises*
> 
> find me @ demonicguardian on instagram & Tumblr


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